Ankyra Sound rasanbleman

knowing that val would not stir far from the den while she was away, mireille kissed the forehead of lucette and made herself leave.
it was @Sobeille she sought as pathway made its way not through the sealands but beyond them, stone and rock pattering beneath sanded paws until she and her daughter had come back to the sound.
"i have always t'ought of dis place as belongin' also to sapphique. as much as eresta is."
vaguely; suppose chani and sobeille set up here? though she did not voice it, unwilling to influence her daughter one way or another. such conclusions must be reached organically.

sobeille had thought it more than once: all roads in sapphique seemingly lead to the sound. she knew a part of sapphique owed its origin to this cold, battered place -- but still, she could not articulate its draw.

as she walked besides maman, sobeille was silent until mireille spoke of their claim here. sobeille had never witnessed how their early settlers had clawed their way to the cliffs from the sound - so it was never even a question that this was not also her stomping grounds.

val say dis place be part of us, same as de cliffs. sobeille offered, kicking over a rock as she looked long at maman. she was so poised -- so beautiful -- sobeille would do anything to be half as assured. maman -- here she paused and drank of the silence between them. what was your childhood like?

"peaceful." until the bear. "when i was a girl, my brot'er sobo went missin'. i swam to de blackwater islands to find him. dat was a long ways," mireille murmured in exclamation. "in de same year, jus' before, de pack moonglow came to de taiga. so many of us gat'ered to hunt caribou dat year."
she let a warm silence fall across the chests of cold metal that could never be opened with any key sobeille might witness: the fact of her blood to njord, the cowardice of her own donor in the face of a threat. to his son's death.
she should.
tail flicked. "i have never left sapphique. not even to travel. to go here an' t'ere, yes. but no journeys t'at might keep me forever." her eyes were warm on sobeille. "what i learned of de world was disappointin'. my childhood was good because your grandmot'ers guarded dis place to dere very last breath."

peaceful. was sobeille’s life peaceful?

a long line of thought scribbled across her face.

her maman, swimming to the black waters — over a brother! would she do the same for tousaint or thibault?

sobeille stood a little straighter. she’d taken two journeys now, and felt in sync with her maman’s declaration of the world. it was full of disappointments.

mireille’s eyes were warm upon sobeille, like sunglow on a field so long forgotten by light its features were stained by blue ink. maman, sobeille turned an entreating eye upon her. tell me more about grandme — please.

"which one?" she grinned, then nipped playfully at sobeille and trotted proudly along the strand. 
"your grandmot'ers were pirates. dey lived many places an' dey fought a war to found sapphique. t'ere was a pack called drageda which once stood upon t'ese cliffs. a large pack. warriors. strong. took your gran'ma rosalyn hostage. an' erzulie, ah. dey fought up de cliff wid a charge. dey rescued rosalyn an' dey took de land."
it was not quite the true sequence of events. then rusalka had indeed warred with drageda, but their time in the cliffs had come later, even after they themselves had been routed.
a war for the cliffs was more romantic, bathed-blood brutality for the history of sapphique.
"dey fought bears, more den once, sobeille. an' cats. de traveled longer down de coast' den i have gone. warriors. warriors who wanted to settle in peace. fighters who defended dat peace till de end."

she barely deflected the nip aimed her way, in part because she was greedy to learn more. her trot moved in metronome to her maman’s, eyes trained hungrily on the face of her mother.

all of dem. she breathed, focused.

pirates! etienne had said the same. and here she was, hardly more than a glorified land-trotter. did her blood know? did it sing for raids and for the pound of the sea? she felt there was a piece missing always, that she was astride a world that ran parallel to the world she belonged in.

drageda, bears, and warriors. a tradition sobeille now carried in her heart like a blazing torch. she had only ever known peace in her lifetime, and like any foolhardy, naive youth, she longed to experience the taste of war; unaware that this was perhaps life’s bitterest tincture.

i want to be like dem. sobeille exhaled, feeling a tremor of pride ripple through her body to be born of such divine stock. do we have any enemies anymore, maman?

"you do be like dem, sobeille," she promised with a light to her eyes. 
she felt the fire moving in her daughter, saw the straight back and the flames aloft, the backdrop of the cliff and the bear's roaring, and knew that sapphique might be reborn again.
mireille shook her head. "no more, my girl. not for a very long time." and it was what erzulie and rosalyn had wanted, after all, she believed. a final war fought to end all war and bring permanent peace to their descendants.
did her own blood call for more?

there was no higher compliment to sobeille then to be compared to the ancestors she held in the same esteem as gods; her fur rippled but she was silent.

sobeille was too young to know war; the dust had only just settled when she was born. she had yet to learn the true value of peace; something her grandmes understood implicitly.

she ruminated and wondered if the enemies. if they were not all dead, they slumbered on some far reach of the map. any day they could reappear, and rise like they had done that first day they stormed down from the high cliffs.

what ‘appened to drageda?

she shook her head. "dey fell, is all i know. toppled from de cliffs. we broke dem. well, our foremo'ters did," she said with a grin. "truth be told, sometimes i wonder if i would not mind anot'er war."
sapphique was not passive, but it was isolated. their young came and went between their colder climes and the radiant tropical.
but what did they know of holding land in blood? she still had much youth of her own, and sometimes she wondered if she wanted to spend it in such peace.

she imagined what it must look like to see bodies broken by fang or cliff; their limbs bent impossible directions, their sightless eyes peering into a world in which there would be no return.

sobeille longed for a chance to prove herself, and a war seemed the perfect battleground in which to test her mettle. she was too young to understand war was the rape of progress, the dissolution of decency — in time she would learn such things, but for now she sat eagerly aside her mother and her mind leapt in joyous, porpoise-like bounds through various scenarios.

do we ‘ave any enemies? she queried, wondering if she could not direct such perilous ambition to their doorstep.

"we donnae have any," mireille said with a smirk that flew across her face. "sobeille miette, i suppose you be wantin' to go off an' make some, den?" the obsidian teased, though she was not quite sure it was a joke at all.
ambition beat in sobeille, and it was something she saw in herself as banked down, latent. peace had come. peace had been kept. but what cost did peace exact?
"do fightin' be some'tin' you want to do?" her eyes found the sea. steadying; eternal.

sobeille abruptly pondered the life of ants. wolves had few natural enemies -- but ants, the wolves of the insect world -- harbored thousands. wasps. beetles. grubs. predatory caterpillars that mimicked the scent of their young, and gluttonously consumed their brood one by one. it seemed to her that everything was an enemy, just posing as something else.

did she want to fight? sobeille yearned to prove herself, and it seemed one of the few valiant ways how. she was a soul maybe born too late for conquest, and too early for war's final coming. straddled between, she simply languished. no. mm, yes...? mebbe. i dunno. but i wan' to be good at it, in case i ever need. she followed her maman's gaze to the sea, wondering if there was an order of ants underwater, or even wolves.

"you could begin by learnin' to fight," mireille smiled, and with a sudden spontaneity she dashed ahead of herself and sobeille, further up the path. "now!" the obsidian exclaimed, turning to plant her feet solidly upon the earth of the sound, "come. attack."
this was also a lesson for her to learn; had she ever fought before? mireille knew these abilities lay in her body, honed by the sea; she did herself a disservice to let such muscles lie so dormant.

sobeille’s eyes lit like lanterns, the blood rising to her face to be so invitingly cajoled by her maman.

she wordlessly followed, her skin alight in ripples of excitement. careful of her step, sobeille circled her maman.

but she was nervous to perform poorly — it was easier to stalk than to strike, in her opinion. head low, she came for mireille’s flank, waiting for the counter.

it came in the form of mireille's hip twitching hard and forward, leaning into the strike with a controlled force that could bruise the edges of one's mouth. her own muzzle came down over sobeille's ears, her nape.
for a moment she allowed the grapple, then sought to shove them apart with a breathy sound of laughter.

too easily she was thwarted! her face burned as she felt teeth on her exposed nape — stupid, stupid sobeille.

mireille sprang back with a breathy peal of laughter. this time sobeille stood her ground, feeling her jaw ache from the controlled brunt of her maman’s hips.

no low motion, then. she’d learned her faux paux there.

now sobeille drove for mireille’s shoulder, head high — but it was a feint intending to draw out her maman’s response, and she waited with a clack of teeth for mireille’s jaws to seek her.

wow i suck shall we wrap soon? <3

she rose to meet it, realizing too late it was a feint.
they collided; she tucked muzzle and swung her teeth once, upward, to try a block for her daughter's strike.
and all around them, the warrior spirits of the salt cliffs watched and breathed, as if watchful in the training of another woman's warrior.
sobeille would bring pride to them all.

once more, she was countered.

yet through each failure, sobeille learned. she explored; she tried different moves, pulled different punches — and though she never beat maman that day, she walked away a little more experienced.

and that was all a mother could hope for; the success of her daughters due to her endless and patient teaching.